Talk:Dash

The word "dash" is often used differently

The article refers to the dash character, which of course has a well-established meaning. But people often use the word dash to refer to the hyphen character. This has been true for a long time, and is even more widespread with the rise of the internet. (Example: "The web address is oak dash valley dash hotel dot com.")

I understand the structure of the article, and I'm sure it's consistent with the structure of other articles describing each character. But I think this common usage should also be acknowledged.This may not be a "correct" usage, but it's a common and widespread. An encyclopedia should be descriptive rather than prescriptive. I'm not suggesting diluting the detailed description. But the article deserves a separate section to describe this this common and widespread usage of dash referring to hyphen.

Omc (talk) 17:31, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Please add a row for entering characters in Google Docs (ad maybe Sheets and Presentations)

Rendering dashes on computers has rows for major text editing systems. Please add a row for Google Docs Richard C Haven (talk) 19:09, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

@Richardchaven:, welcome to Wikipedia. One of the first lessons you will learn is that if you want anything done around here, you have to do it yourself! We are all volunteers. Normally you would update the article yourself but updating tables can be a little bit risky. So may I suggest draft some text to go in the article, put it here, then someone will show you how to add it. Thank you. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:33, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

No obvious violation of WP:NPOV or WP:NOTGUIDE

@John Maynard Friedman: I am reverting this edit of yours as I cannot see that either WP:NPOV or WP:NOTGUIDE is violated. What of point of view do you think is advocated? And NOTGUIDE says

Describing to the reader how people or things use or do something is encyclopedic; instructing the reader in the imperative mood about how to use or do something is not.

There is no required limit to descriptions of "how people or things use or do something", including detailed use of the numeric encoding of HTML that you find excessive.

Also, your mention of "when en dashes are used in phrasing" is unnecessarily obscure. "Phrasing", per Wikt:phrasing § Noun is "The way a statement is put together, particularly in matters of style and word choice." This covers nearly all uses of the en dash. Perhaps the sentence could read

It is only when en dashes are used in setting off parenthetical expressions  – such as this one – that they take spaces around them.

Peter Brown (talk) 17:50, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

@Peter M. Brown: the npov challenge was the description of spaced ndash as doing the job of emdash, implying that the latter is the correct or reference form. Maybe in the US it is but not elsewhere.

The notguide challenge was to tell readers how to encode the hex or decimal values as HTML. Seriously?

Your suggestion reads fine to me, go ahead. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 21:58, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Done. Macrakis has deleted the material concerning the hex and decimal values. While I still think it unobjectionable, I'll let the deletion stand. Peter Brown (talk) 22:33, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Bringhurst's criticism of the em dash is only one opinion

In Dash § Parenthetic and other uses at the sentence level, it is implied that the spaced en dash gives "clearer typography than 'set close' em-dashes." The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst is cited in support. However, as Dash § En dash versus em dash makes quite clear, the matter is controversial; Oxford University Press, among other publishers, prefers the unspaced em dash. I am accordingly labeling as {{Dubious}} the claim that the en dash is clearer. Peter Brown (talk) 02:17, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

True, I should not have expressed it in Wikivoice. I will rephrase it later today to make clear whose opinion it is. [I highly recommend his book, btw. It is free to borrow from the archive.org library.] But just as a an OR observation: tightset emdashes were the norm in Victorian England; they are vanishingly rare today unless the publication has a substantial US market. Nobody made a rule that spaced endashes should be the new normal, typographers just preferred it. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:13, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Comment. I'm not sure increasing use of spaced endashes can be attributed to typographer preference as much as the transition from traditional typesetting to DTP software and autocorrect/autoformatting settings. Personal observation so take it with a grain of salt (and obviously not citable), but I've found that knowledge of how and when to use endashes vs. emdashes vs. hyphens is pretty uncommon even among people who do DTP and layout as a profession (mostly speaking of trade publishing and marcom). —Carter (talk) 12:45, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Peter M. Brown: I couldn't find a clever way to fix it, so I have (more or less) reverted to status quo ante. Given that there is a section on en-dash v em-dash – and it is flagged at the beginning of the section – I decided that it would be labouring the point. I should point out that my 'more or less' means that I have discarded the opening words that took unspaced em-dash as the starting point for analysis.

@Tcr25: you are probably right about "the facts on the ground", but Robert Bringhurst (a noted Canadian typographer) is rather emphatic on the subject:

In typescript, a double hyphen (--) is often used for a long dash. Double hyphens in a typeset document are a sure sign that the type was set by a typist, not a typographer. A typographer will use an em dash, three-quarter em, or en dash, depending on context or personal style. The em dash is the nineteenth-century standard, still prescribed in many editorial style books, but the em dash is too long for use with the best text faces. Like the oversized space between sentences, it belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography.

— Robert Bringhurst

Hopefully this resolves the dispute. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:26, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

References

5x

I propose changing the 5x column of the Unicode table to include a "standard" letter as well. This would highlight the vertical position of the different forms of dash. An upper case M seems a suitable choice — as in M----- vs. M____ — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 12:09, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Y No objections, so went ahead — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 11:14, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Example of hyphens used as en-dashes

I understand it's Wikipedia policy to use en-dashes for coordinate terms, but in this sentence, it makes no sense to use en-dashes, since it's an example of places where hyphens are used instead. As such, this is is confusing to read:

--

For example, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the AMA Manual of Style, and Dorland's medical reference works use hyphens, not en dashes, in coordinate terms (such as blood–brain barrier), in eponyms (such as Cheyne–Stokes respiration, Kaplan–Meier method), and so on.

--

I had changed it to hyphens, but it got reverted (on 2019-08-21), and I disagree with the reasoning behind the reversion. Like, put a [sic] after each such hyphen if you want, but it's an example, so it should be shown as is, warts and all. IMHO, YMMV, etc. FuturSimple (talk) 17:33, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

New York-London flight

New York-London flight under "En dash § relationships and connections" doesn't make sense:

It states that "New York-London flight" could be misconstrued as a New flight from York to London, and suggests the use of the phrase "New York-to-London". This phrasing has the exact same issue. Should we just use an example other than New York and forget the whole ambiguity bit? EntirelyOnline (talk) 19:16, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Use of en-dashes for description of/elaboration on listed items

Wikipedia, including this article (§"See also"), uses en-dashes to define, elaborate on, and describe items in numbered and bulleted lists; however this article makes no reference to this use case. This use case should be added—either describing it or providing a link elsewhere that does. SMikutsky (talk) 16:05, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Suspended section "Typing the characters". Wikipedia is not a manual.

I have temporarily commented out the section "Typing the characters". As it stood, it is an egregious violation of WP:NOTMANUAL and WP:DUE. It is bogged down in the detail of different OSs, different keyboards, different keyboard mappings. How is it encyclopedic? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 14:07, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

What am missing? I don't see any reference to specific OSs. WP:NOTMANUAL does discourage use of the imperative mood, but the imperative-mood use of the verb "see", present to help the reader find his/her way around in Wikipedia, is surely justified. The phrase "it became common" introduces a legitimate historical claim that is defective in that no source is provided, but that calls for Template:Citation needed, not for suppression of the claim. "It may also be possible ..." also requires elaboration but, again, editors may be be able to provide it.

The sentence beginning "It is common ..." is sourced to Robert Bringhurst. I am unfamiliar with his work — perhaps it can be used to support more of the section's claims?

Peter Brown (talk) 17:18, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

My concern is really that the section is a wp:cfork of Unicode input, QWERTY, QWERTZ, AZERTY, MsWindows, iOS, Linux, ChromeOS, etc. To give instructions on how to use Windows, iOS, Android, Linux to enter symbols is (IMO) just WP:UNDUE. Yes, we should use the WP:See also to point readers at this material but it is crazy to replicate it (in a variety of forms and detail) at each article about every symbol. It also seems probable that the whole thing has been technically obsoleted by autocorrect, which replaces a pair of hyphen-minuses with an mdash and a space hyhen-minus space with a spaced ndash.

Bringhurst is the touchstone reference for modern typography: you can borrow it via the WP:WikiLibrary. I can't recommend it too highly.

• Bringhurst, Robert (2004). The elements of typographic style (third ed.). Seattle: Hartley & Marks. ISBN 978-0-88179-206-5..

It doesn't contain anything (that I can recall) about how to do typesetting (or electronic equivalent) – nor would I expect that it would, for the same reasons as I've set out above. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:29, 23 March 2024 (UTC)